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Wednesday, January 6, 2021

Black Zone Myth Chant - (2017) Feng Shen

 

Editions Gravats ‎– GRVTS010

The mighty Black Zone Myth Chant returns with a new LP of Chopped and Screwed electronics via deep space New Age for Low Jack and Jean Carval’s Gravats label...

Max P, aka Black Zone Myth Chant, presents the project’s most adventurous and urgent despatch yet, dosing with the unfathomably layered and immersive Feng Shen. What was initially intended as a one-away project has now morphed into something powerfully undefinable and strangely affective over the course of two albums, Straight Cassette and Mane Thecel Phares, an EP and a mixtape, realising something of a butterfly effect feedback between the gestures of his strangely formed objects and their dilated reception by listeners around the world.

Over the course of eight tracks he renders a phenomenal space where he can best describe the paradoxical, impossible physics of a psychedelic soul, by toying with the listener’s gauge of anticipation, perspective and temporality with a poetic clash of ideas lent from chopped & screwed hip hop and liminal club musics.

It’s music which exists in two states at once, driving yet floating, as with the pull and push of pitched down voices and rolling rhythms in Their Love For You, or with impenetrable density of clarity in the layered dimensions of Kubara, following a line that binds kosmische and dancehall in Under Protest/Telos, to the polymetric harmonic swirl of War Paint (DAPL Resistance), and connects the heat-seeking techno impulses of Ideas In Action, to the centre-less ambient panorama of Feng Jing.

Blod & Miljö - (2019) ST 7''

 

 I Dischi Del Barone ‎– IDDB030

"Inevitable collaboration from Arv & Miljö and Blod, two decent examples of the Gothenburigan bullheadedness that has occured around the FFFM/never gonna fit in circles in town. A weird 9-minute collage split up over two 45rpm sides, cuts from the past fades in and out with Svensk Sommar I Stilla Frid session leftovers straight from the floor tangled up with spicy snippets from limited to 14 cassettes, some 2018 live action and newly recorded nonsense. It's a poor man's mash up, an emotional coming of age/sucks-to-be-a-teenager/religious paranoia slowmo rollercoaster going backwards. Featuring Cobweb Iris, Hans Villius and Snapper samples. Mastered by Viktor Ottosson and artwork by Charlott Malmenholt. 200 copies, black vinyl and stamped white labels, postcard attached to the cover, insert. 45rpm." - I Dischi Del Barone.

Black Hat - (2014) Thought Of Two LP

 

Hausu Mountain ‎– HAUSMO 13

Spread informally across underground networks, learned by hearing and watching one’s influences in action, possessed of as many unique voices as artists – the experimental electronic and noise/drone movements constitute contemporary incarnations of “folk” music, with knobs, oscillators, and patch cables in the place of acoustic guitars and harmonicas. As these movements flourish and overlap, the music that Nelson Bean makes as Black Hat emerges as a bold addition to the expanding center of the Venn Diagram. As much as Bean participates in these scenes, performing regularly around his Seattle home and touring the west coast in the Summer of 2013, electronic music began for him as a family affair. Growing up in Oakland, CA, the 24-year-old producer received his first analog drum machines and synths from his father, a musician-turned-doctor. Supportive friends and family, the right gear, fierce ambition, and the inspiration gleaned from live shows and the boundless expanses of the internet: on paper, these seem like a recipe for a striking project. But Nelson Bean’s music exceeds the sum of the parts that brought it to life, carving out complex new permutations of composition and live performance that span the wide spectrum of the contemporary electronic underground.
Thought of Two, Bean’s first full-length LP, arrives in the wake of his acclaimed Covalence cassette (Field Hymns, 2013), extending the compressed, hypnotic styles of that release into three mammoth new compositions teeming with abstracted rhythms and alien tones. Composed with an intricate system of digital processes and synth hardware, the sessions captured here on record represent the culmination of the tonal explorations and structural decisions that Bean continues to fine-tune in his improvisation-infused live performances.
On a measure-by-measure basis, Thought of Two confounds listeners’ expectations of resolution and recursion. Its sophisticated rhythmic grids and detailed lead voices congeal and conflict in unpredictable fashion, propelling each track through diverse atmospheres and textures. “Imaginary Friends” begins with a brooding death howl that gives way to a mind-warping kick drum pattern, all before the machine-drum beatdown shatters and rebuilds the session from the ground up. “Portrait in Fluorescent Light” layers washed-out drones and patient effect manipulations into a narcotic drift that stretches time well beyond the track’s eight minute running time. The side-long “Memory Triptych” weaves a yearning synth motif through three distinct emotional spaces: a burgeoning introduction; the slow burn of the middle passage, led by a loping bassline and a muffled drum pattern into a matrix of interlocking pulses; the finale, pitting angelic synth quavers against the rumble of one last recurring bass phrase. Bean imbues his compositions with the grotesque cinematic sensibilities and rhythmic experimentation of Coil, the ghost-in-the-machine humanity of Laurie Spiegel’s computer-based synthesizer work, and the dark energies and urges of Miles Davis’s late-period psych-fusion ensembles – to single out just a few touchstones. Above all, Thought of Two showcases a mind eager to expand the vocabulary of today’s conflating strains of electronic music, presenting audacious new ideas with a confidence that demands playback at maximum volume.

Drekka - (2019) No Tracks In The Snow LP

 

Dais Records ‎– DAIS128

 "No Tracks in the Snow" is a collection of tracks from the early days of Drekka’s history; the third offering for Dais Records and an appendix between the second and third parts of the 'Tarwestraat' trilogy of LPs for the label.


For over twenty years, Mkl Anderson has curated a vast archive of recorded material for his cinematic ritual ambient industrial project, Drekka. He works with memory not only as a subject but also as a healing process, continually delving into this personal world of sound; examining, revisiting, and repurposing recordings in an attempt to recall a past which sings from the darkness surrounding the tenuous provinces of memory and dreams - the real ghosts of time and sound.

Recorded between 1996 and 2002, the album showcases Drekka's early exploratory development across a variety of styles. And yet it is also Drekka in the present moment; culled, curated, and assembled with care. Not unlike Borges’ "A Personal Anthology" - or indeed any of Drekka’s own recent work - this recording can be understood as a cohesive narrative more than as a simple compilation.


As Drekka moved from its Bristol UK influenced space folk beginnings, backwards towards Anderson's earlier UK industrial tape culture foundation, his predilection for reworking pieces over time was emerging; recontextualizing narratives to bring out new truths from one's own history. This process would become a cornerstone of Anderson's work for the decades to follow.

The album begins with “Strika” (1998), originally recorded for the lovesliescrushing side project, Vir (a "secret audio army" in which individual performers were not even aware of who the other participants were). The track features one of Anderson’s earliest collaborations with Mark Trecka (of Pillars And Tongues / Dark Dark Dark), who would go on to be one of his longest standing co-conspirators.


"Christmas 1973 or 1974" (1999) is a lament for a childhood which is almost entirely forgotten and a yearning for some tangible, physical proof that this childhood existed at all. The accompanying video for the track utilizes actual home movie footage of Anderson as a very young boy, fulfilling this longing and adding heart rending weight to the song and its lyrics.


"We Who Are Not Lonely" (2000) has become one of the most beloved works in Anderson’s early canon. A gauzy musing on the catharsis of upheaval, the piece was written and recorded initially in the months leading up to Anderson’s relocation from Chicago to Bloomington, Indiana. It is a brooding work which shows Anderson at his most self-possessed as a songwriter and is a confluence of the earliest playing-and-singing take on Drekka and the cinematic world building soundscapes to come.


The album closes with “Tracking shot (wide)” (2000), a brief stream-of-consciousness sound piece dedicated to Andrei Tarkovsky. The track most certainly points in the direction that Drekka would explore extensively over the two decades; the direction which has led Anderson to where he is now firmly positioned.


"No Tracks in the Snow" is an exploration of the threads of continuity which bind the various modes of Anderson’s oeuvre. As he nears completion of the third album in his trilogy of LPs for Dais Records, "No Tracks in the Snow" is an introspective pause and a celebration of a life spent listening to the world around us and its sleeping potential.

Mick Chillage - (2017) Exulansis

 

Self-Released ‎– none

Exulansis...The tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it,whether through envy or pity or simple foreignness which allows music to drift away from the rest of your life story, until the memory itself feels out of place, almost mythical, wandering restlessly in the fog, no longer even looking for a place to land.

Mick Chillage presents us with ten pieces of music that clock in around 4 hours with additional remixes from Joel Tammik & Si Matthews and
Darren McClure

Mc Yallah - (2019) Kubali

 

Hakuna Kulala ‎– HK015 

Hakuna Kulala run out their first album with ‘Kubali’, revolving MC Yallah’s fiercely controlled delivery matched by rugged riddims from Debmaster.

A prime showcase of east Africa’s incredibly fertile electronic dance music scene, ‘Kubali’ catches Uganda-born, Kenya-based MC Yallah step on and off 11 seriously ruffshod productions blessed with the best of both scuzzy industrial fetish styles and up-to-the-second global bass/trap movements.

The mode is slow but urgent, toggling the gauge between Debmaster’s pressurised instrumentals and Yallah’s hot gobs of fire in a manner that recalls The Bug’s workouts with warrior Queen as much as a nastier version of Equiknoxx and Shanique Marie or a colourful counter to Coucou Chloe’s work with Sega Bodega.

Bookended by fractious reflections of their sonic environment int he shopped up vocals of ‘TT12’ and the distorted scenes of chants and percussion in ‘TT26’, the session flows thru big vocal highlights in the cold ragga slam of ‘Kubali’, the blown-out, shark-eyed killer ‘Teba Kuda Mabega’, their clash of sour sirens with demonic dembow bumps in ‘Malbanyoma’, and the grimy swagger of ‘Sifa Leero (Gangsta Edition)’. But that’s not to discount the smart placement of Debmaster’s succinct, scowling instrumentals, strung out between the bashy rogue ‘TT32v2’ and the psychoactive militancy of ‘TT145.’

100% bad as fuck.

MMMD - (2019) Egoismo LP

 

Antifrost ‎– afro2079 

Egotism, Arrogance, Hypocrisy, Separation, Bitter truth and a mouth of gold to deliver it. Tremors, chants, otherworldly strings and infrasound continue to dominate the soundscape, this time however a faint light flickers in the horizon.

 


 

MMMD - (2018) Hagazussa LP

 

Antifrost ‎– afro 2077

 Original Soundtrack for “Hagazussa – A heathen's curse”, a medieval terror film by Lukas Feigelfeld. 



Morton Subotnick - (2004) Electronic Works Vol. 2 CD

 

Mode ‎– mode 132 
 

Morton Subotnick (USA)
is one of the United States' premier composers of electronic music and an innovator in works involving instruments and other media, including interactive computer music systems. Most of his music calls for a computer part, or live electronic processing; his oeuvre utilizes many of the important technological breakthroughs in the history of the genre.

The work, which brought Subotnick celebrity, was Silver Apples of the Moon. Written in 1967 using the Buchla modular synthesizer, this work contains synthesized tone colours striking for its day, and a control over pitch that many other contemporary electronic composers had relinquished. There is a rich counterpoint of gestures, in marked contrast to the simple surfaces of much contemporary electronic music. The exciting, exotic timbres and the dance-inspiring rhythms caught the ear of the public -- the record was an American bestseller in the classical music category, an extremely unusual occurrence for any contemporary concert music at the time.

The next eight years saw the production of several more important compositions for LP, realized on the Buchla synthesizer: The Wild Bull, Touch, Sidewinder and Four Butterflies. All of these pieces are marked by sophisticated timbres, contrapuntally rich textures, and sections of continuous pulse suggesting dance. In fact, Silver Apples of the Moon was used as dance music by several companies including the Stuttgart Ballet and Ballet Rambert and The Wild Bull, and later works, including A Sky of Cloudless Sulfur and The Key to Songs, have been choreographed by leading dance companies throughout the world.

In addition to music in the electronic medium, Subotnick has written for symphony orchestra (including "Before the Butterfly" a bi-centennial commission for the NY Phil, La Phil, Chicago Symphony, Boston Symphony and the Cleveland Orchestra), chamber ensembles, theater and multimedia productions. His "staged tone poem" The Double Life of was premiered at the 1984 Olympics Arts Festival in Los Angeles.

Jacob's Room, Subotnick's multimedia opera, received its premiere in Philadelphia in April 1993 at The American Music Theater Festival. The Key to Songs, for chamber orchestra and computer (1985), Return, commissioned to celebrate the return of Halley's Comet, premiered with an accompanying sky show in the planetarium of Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles in 1986.

His 3 CDROMS: All My Hummingbirds Have Alibis (1994), Making Music (1996), Making More Music (1998), an interactive 'Media Poem', Intimate Immensity, premiered at the Lincoln Center Festival in NY (1997) and Echoes from the Silent Call of Girona (1998). Gestures for DVD surround sound and DVD ROM will be released on Mode Records in the spring of 2001. Making Music has now sold over 400,000 copies and is in 12 languages. In addition, his website for children, creatingmusic.com, is now online.

He also produced a series of concerts and events (1990-1997) where performers interacted musically in three cities simultaneously.

Subotnick holds the Mel Powell Chair in composition at the California Institute of the Arts. He tours extensively throughout the U.S. and Europe as a lecturer and composer/performer. He is published by European-American.

Petridisch - (2017) Oliveros: Sonic Meditations (Selections) CS

 

Metropolitan State Productions ‎– MSP 032

 

Pavel Milyakov - (2020) Masse Métal

 

The Trilogy Tapes ‎– TTT085 

As Buttechno, Pavel Milyakov has become a staple in Russia’s underground techno scene. Since emerging in 2010, he has founded the Johns’ Kingdom collective, soundtracked runway shows for fashion designer Gosha Rubchinskiy and released on revered labels like Cititrax and трип (trip). His new record, released under his given name on cult favourite The Trilogy Tapes at the end of April, sees him swap the dancefloor for more experimental fare.

The culmination of a years-long research project that included a flagship performance at last year’s Berlin Atonal, Masse Métal deals in creaking industrial soundscapes instead of pounding rhythm. While not the first time Milyakov has set out to explore territory beyond the club – last year’s La Maison De La Mort, for example, saw him try his hand at ambient – it’s one of the most extreme departures from his Buttechno project the Moscow-based producer has made to date.

While the album isn’t the most soothing of lockdown listens, as Milyakov himself says, Masse Métal speaks to the sense of precarity and, well, doom, that has become heightened during the current crisis. The album is built around samples Milyakov collected of military drills and broken machinery, always backed by a constant sense of unease. Together it evokes arid, man made wastelands and the bleakness of post-industrial capitalism, posing questions about humanity’s relationship to nature and itself.

We caught up with Milyakov shortly after the record’s release to discuss Masse Métal and talk through some of the album’s key tracks.

Quicksails - (2020) Blue Rise LP

 

Hausu Mountain ‎– HAUSMO100 

All music by Ben Baker Billington 2016 - 2019.
Mastered by Patrick Klem.
Art & design by Sam Kahn.

Quicksails’ approach on Blue Rise foregrounds his palette of modular and digital synthesizers, resulting in a strain of music that brims with shimmering textures and lush, layered harmonies. More than a full-on pivot to another style, Quicksails enters into a mode of production that highlights his melodic sensibilities and his ear for sophisticated DAW-based composition. Each track unfolds as a self-contained world replete with fluctuating tiers of fine-grain synth-tones that morph as they stack together into systems of polyrhythmic activity or smear into all-consuming drift. Quicksails lays out a menu of contrasting sentimental spaces and self-contained sonic tableaus, each of which refracts the sun’s light out across new terrains. Blue Rise cements Quicksails not only as a master synthesist and arranger of far-flung sound sources, but as a composer attuned to the time dilating properties and the instantaneous emotional impacts of the zones that he lays out before us.

Stanislav Tolkachev - (2020) Be Careful And Nobody Dies

 

Semantica Records ‎– SEMANTICA 112 

In 2013, the Ukranian techno artist Stanislav Tolkachev released Simple As A Miracle, his first record for Semantica, on which he explored a tough, twisted, minimalist, synth-led sound. Many of his records before then had their basis in this style—ditto most of his records since. Be Careful And Nobody Dies sees him return to Semantica, following the reissue last year of the Right Angle EP. Once again, the EP is tough, twisted, minimalist and synth-led. But here's the curious thing: it still sounds super fresh. So what is it about Tolkachev's sound that keeps it from becoming stale?

The strength of his synths is surely a massive part of it. There's barely a few seconds here where Tolkachev doesn't have some rich, rippling synthesizer shaping the stereo field. Two of the tracks—"Farewell" and "Emptyness"—don't even need beats to generate a powerful sense of forward momentum. Tolkachev is also drawn discordance and polyrhythms, and although we get relatively little of that here, "Manhunt" is a fine example. You'll want to stay alert to the moment at 01:15 where he fires up a piston-like hi-hat, ricocheting off the synth in a way that's equal parts confusing and thrilling. The record's most straightforward track might be its best, though. "Everything Ends" sounds like it could have been made on a four-track recorder. But when your synths sound this dazzling, what else is needed?

Sir E.U - (2016) 23

 

Self Released ‎– none

Sir E.U is not only someone I call a friend, but one of the most intelligent people I’ve had the pleasure to meet. He’s also greatly artistic, and blends his vast knowledge of world history with his homegrown D.C. roots and signature eccentric vision as an artist, combining for a smorgasbord of musings and clever rhymes that all add up for an entertaining and enjoyable listen.

His newest project, EBUKU, is the latest in a long line of projects from E.U, but this one is different—it’s E.U as fuck, but this is definitely a more mature Steven behind the mic; as both an artist and a person it seems. He buoyantly raps over the eclectic, at times glitchy production from a slew of DMV boardslappers and more.

What I love about his projects is that they stray away from the typical skeleton of projects that people put out these days. I don’t wanna say there are universal archetypes on every album, but often there are different tracks that are made to appeal to different kinds of people, and I’ve noticed it kinda limits the creativity of the artist because they’re trying to fit into that one box that’s going to appeal to X amount of people. Well, that goes entirely out the window with E.U, and I fucking love it.

EBUKU is an audible illustration of Sir E.U’s one-of-a-kind personality and flavor as an artist, and it’s really great. I’m mad excited to hear what he comes with next, because I know it’s going to be ridiculous and intricate in all the best ways.

------------------------

D.C. rapper and DMV rap scene pioneer Sir E.U. is back with a new project to follow his last album EBUKU and latest EP We Back now he’s back with more abstract music and unorthodox, eclectic production that only he could rap over. “23” is 9 track project filled with uniques and off kilter production borrowing from his rap idol MF Doom, Sir E.U. mixes several tracks with topical audio clips featuring everything from SNL’s “Black Jeopardy” skit, Hilary Clinton’s “super predator” comments and an audio clip of Oprah cursing taken from a sit down with her and Lindsay Lohan. The 9 track album features production from Left Fingers, stevedreez, GHOSTIE, HIPPODRAMIDAN, Pacific Yew and N.O.M.A.D. “23” is a “crazy age” for E.U. and he shows that on this project, “23” is an interesting listen a mixture of introspection,observations and stream of consciousness flow set to some odd production. It’s a reflection of where Sir E.U. is at in his life and with his music, give it a listen. 

Sparkling Wide Pressure - (2019) Yowling Seers CS

 

Lillerne Tape Club ‎– LL111

 Lillerne is extremely excited to help bring into the world the newest set of recordings by Frank Baugh, aka Sparkling Wide Pressure. Baugh’s prolific solo project has been releasing countless cassettes and CD-Rs (barely an exaggeration) via all of your favorite labels (including 2013’s Press The Reverse And Give Me The Tape, also on Lillerne) and his own Kimberly Dawn imprint. Baugh is a rare master of both quantity AND quality, andYowling Seers continues in the tradition of collecting his impeccably constructed, beautifully performed and produced compositions. In addition to his utilization of guitar, synth, tape collage, and vocal melody/abstraction, Yowling Seers is very rhythmic and often relies on and experiments with structures of rhythm and drum programming. This collection is as moody and sparse in parts as it is head-bobbingly plodding and inspiring—all the while mixing together the recipe of instrumentation and tape wizardry for which the SWP project is so well-known. Another beautiful document of time, memory and emotion by Frank, and I feel privileged to contribute in any way to its existence. Edition of 50 pro-dubbed cassettes with full-color, double-sided artwork featuring paintings by Frank Baugh.

Sparkling Wide Pressure - (2020) Fake Spells CS

 

Adversary ‎– Adversary no. 28 

When you dream. When you try to remember.
The rust has always been there.
You found your bookmark between a stone and a ripple.
A mossy shadow.

Active since 2007, Frank Baugh's Sparkling Wide Pressure has been a longtime favorite in our house and his newest tape, "Fake Spells" is simply a masterpiece. Warped vocals, loops, and synthesizers twist around patiently meandering guitars. These are songs in the vein of late-period Coil run through a hazy filter of Appalachian Americana. For those familiar with SWP, you already know. For those who may be new to the project, now is the time to get on board.

Professionally duplicated tapes. Comes with download code.
Edition of 50.

Omrr - (2017) Devils For My Darling CD

 

Dronarivm ‎– DR-48 

 Following “Music for the Anxious” album release with the French record label Eilean Records, omrr joined the Russian record label Dronarivm.

Devils for my Darling was created in 2017, The album is an imaginary love story.

Omrr is the stage name of Omar El Abd (born 22 September 1983), a self-taught musician, guitarist and sound artist based in Cairo, Egypt. omrr’s sound is based on glitch, noise, micro-sounds, sampling and field recording. He uses a variety of instruments and software to create free form, dynamic and dense sonic landscapes.

RXM Reality - (2019) Devil World Wide CS

 

Hausu Mountain ‎– HAUSMO 91

 RXM Reality is Chicago-based producer Mike Meegan. His futuristic strain of detailed beat work jitters somewhere between the margins of kinetic IDM, grimy industrial electronics, and intricately spatialized textural collage. DEViL WORLD WiDE, his second release with Hausu Mountain, builds on the precedent established by Panic Cycle (HAUSMO72, 2018), as Meegan steers his hybrid rig of hardware samplers and software systems through a series of rhythmic sketches that are as transfixing as they are claustrophobic. While RXM Reality builds his tracks over a rough grid that keeps one foot rooted in danceable rhythms, bursts of jagged percussion counteract the groove while noise debris drips between morphing synthetic elements. Individual synth voices serve as both anti-melodic lead lines and rhythmic markers akin to drum patterns, quivering their way through his tracks in various states of granular disintegration. When he eases back on the level of density and allows his sound sources to melt into swathes of silence, specters of beat structures carry on in lurching, start-and-stop rhythms.
RXM Reality’s music draws inspiration from his urban surroundings in Chicago as much as from a growing canon of dystopian audio and visual touchstones that inch closer and closer to real life as time goes on. DEViL WORLD WiDE’s fractal, continually splintered approach to sound design recalls the work of modern luminaries like Arca and Actress, two influences Meegan cited as formative to his expanding conceptions of production and composition. Like fellow members of the Hausu Mountain roster such as Fire-Toolz, Khaki Blazer, or Bonnie Baxter, the music of RXM Reality toys with building blocks of dark humor and chaotic irreverence, as tracks break into unexpected shifts in mood or shed any semblance of legible rhythm on a dime to explode into the territory of pure texture. A pummeling passage of breakbeats might slide into a patch of 8-bit squelch, while a brief flash of bouncy, major-key melody might herald the waves of feedback rushing in to wash out the mix. With track titles that land between the diction of dependence (“The Enabler,” “Addict”) and inner serenity (“Totally Stress Free,” “Prayers to Fall Asleep in Perfect Peace”), DEViL WORLD WiDE offers hints at the motivations that orbit Meegan’s art. In practice, RXM Reality’s tracks transcend our mundane daily existence and transmute his internal turmoil and composure into pulsing networks of sound as complex as the emotions that inspired them.

Oren Ambarchi & Will Guthrie - (2019) Knotting CD

 

Some Fine Legacy ‎– SFL 007

Since its debut on two releases from 2011 and 2012 (the live Hit & Run with Joe Talia and the studio Audience of One), the epic structured improvisational piece ‘Knots’ has formed a staple of Oren Ambarchi’s live performances. Like a jazz musician searching for ever-new ways to play a standard, the guitarist has repeatedly brought the piece to life in a variety of settings ranging from guitar/drums duets to a large ensemble replete with string section, with each iteration bringing with it new variations of tone, intensity and character.

Knotting presents the entirety of a beautifully-recorded set performed by Ambarchi and the astonishing Australian- French drum virtuoso Will Guthrie in Geneva in February 2019. Beginning with a delicately played but rapid and insistent ride cymbal rhythm over which Ambarchi layers his signature shimmering Leslie cabinet guitar tones and eventually building, as the piece always does, to a peak of caterwauling harmonic fuzz and thundering drums, the recording also shows the pair taking risks and pushing the piece into new directions, especially in Guthrie’s willingness to let the central pulse momentarily die away or only barely be implied as his main focus of attention turns to instantaneous responses to the subtle rhythmic suggestions of Ambarchi’s shuddering guitar tones. Ambarchi’s performance also demonstrates the ever-evolving nature of his relationship with the guitar, making space for some of the more harmonically uneasy yet subtly lyrical playing (in a tone calling to mind the 80s guitar-synth work of Pat Metheny or Bill Frisell) that has emerged in his recent solo work. Ending with a remarkable coda where Guthrie’s bells and cymbals suddenly transforms the performance into something like Tibetan temple music, Knotting is an essential snapshot of the workof two musicians not content to repeat themselves.

Pancrace - (2019) The Fluid Hammer

 

Penultimate Press ‎– PP44

 Pancrace is a quintet from France comprising Prune Bécheau, Arden Day, Julien Desailly, Léo Maurel, and Jan Vysocky. Pancrace began with a residence in 2015 at the Saint Pancrace church in Dangolsheim where the instrument inventor Léo Maurel resides. Pancrace's debut self-titled double-LP was released by Penultimate Press in 2017 and ended up on The Wire's best releases of that year. After the first record and subsequent tour the band were despondent that the main character of their story, the church organ, was not there. A series of meetings and chance encounters resulted in the band developing their own organ which they named "Organous". The approach of Pancrace is based on the physicality of sound, a choice of specific tone qualities within a given spatial contextual awareness. Therefore, the manufacturing and usage of the musical instrument are constantly reassessed. Consequently, playing with the mechanical aspect of the instruments is central to their musical approach and narrative. Designing an unbound pipe organ -- though emulating some of the mechanical idiomatics of the initial Pancrace church organ -- seemed the obvious way to gain more spatial control over a vast choice of places. This allowed them to approach their music from a totally new angle and work from within the organ. The results of these experiments are captured here, on their second opus, The Fluid Hammer. This new beast of an instrument, somewhere between a spider or an octopus, led Pancrace to compose from the frontality of the instrument as well as with the interactive tone possibilities brought by other instruments. With its six panels display (two bass registers, two treble, and a pair of crumhorns) the organ projects sound like the musique concrèt Acousmonium giving the listener a spatialized perception of a wide range of tones and harmonics. Fluid Hammer is the result of the research and experiments undertaken with the Organous and other instruments. Fluid Hammer is a more rhythmic and percussive affair than its predecessor, bringing to mind the experiments of Conlon Nancarrow as well as fairground barrel organs. The wide range of polyrhythmic patterns generates a constant tension between the machine and the human play. Music for Organous (spatialized and MIDI-controlled pipe organ), Uilleann pipes, Pi-synth, piano, motorised bow, boîte à bourdons, gaida, Baroque violin, hurgy toys, toy piano, componium, bodhran, low whistle, bird calls, AM radio, and shaker.

Ryuichi Sakamoto - (2017) Async CD

 

Milan ‎– M2-36830

 Japanese composer/demi-god Ryuichi Sakamoto presents an exquisitely oneiric and elusively spiritual new album inspired as much by the sound sculptures of Harry Bertoia as the magic of Andrei Tarkovsky’s seminal septet of celluloid classics.

It’s been some years since Sakamoto has placed his name at the top of a solo album proper - as opposed to his swathes of collaborations and film scores - and we can promise that the results herein are definitely worth the wait.

Imagined and realised after a period of fright with his health, Async captures Mr. Sakamoto at his most wistful and wonderful, meditating on the existentialist, ontological themes and atmospheres of Tarkovsky’s work from both a gauzily impressionistic aspect, and a quite literal one, employing readings of Tarkovsky’s poetry (poem transcribed in the liner notes) in a variety of languages from a coterie of contemporaries including long time collaborators David Sylvian, Bernardo Bertolucci (for whom he composed the OST for The Last Emperor) and Carsten Nicolai (Alva Noto), among others.

Embracing both the fluidity and flux of Tarkovsky’s water analogies as well as the harmonic chaos of Harry Bertoia’s lush metal rod clangour, Sakamoto melds feather touch acoustic keys with field recordings, shimmering electronic patinas and signature synthesiser flourishes in a suite that beautifully lives up to and even transcends its influences, revealing some of the most achingly emotive yet often abrasive and abstract work in a catalogue now spanning over 40 years of exemplary work.

Beyond maybe Scott Walker, we can hardly think of another artist who has continued to expand their oeuvre over such a long period of time, and with an appeal quite like this, albeit respectively unique to their work. But Sakamoto really is in a league of his own here, utterly absorbing us with the dappled keys, organ haze and stereo starting doom synths of Andata, thru the stark Sonambient emulations of Disintegration to the romance of ZURE and the almost Toshiya Tsunoda-esque sensitivity of his field recordings woven into Walker or Honj, with humbling moments to be discovered in the switch from disorienting cinematic dialogue in Fullmoon to the legit Ligeti style violence of Async, and again in the curdled chromatics of FF and the Gas-eous swells swirling about Garden.

The Caretaker - (2016) Everywhere at the End of Time

 


 History Always Favours The Winners ‎– HAFTW025  Part One / Two

EVERYWHERE AT THE END OF TIME (COMPLETE EDITION)

When work began on this series it was difficult to predict how the music would unravel itself. Dementia is an emotive subject for many and always a subject I have treated with maximum respect.

Stages have all been artistic reflections of specific symptoms which can be common with the progression and advancement of the
different forms of Alzheimer's.

Thanks always for your support of this series of works
remembered by The Caretaker.

Physical editions of all stages on both vinyl and compact-disc
are available now and are being distributed by Boomkat.
 
May the ballroom remain eternal.

C'est fini.

--

STAGE 1 - (A+B)
Here we experience the first signs of memory loss.
This stage is most like a beautiful daydream.
The glory of old age and recollection.
The last of the great days.

STAGE 2 - (C+D)
The second stage is the self realisation and awareness that something is wrong with a refusal to accept that. More effort is made to remember so memories can be more long form with a little more deterioration in quality. The overall personal mood is generally lower than the first stage and at a point before confusion starts setting in.

STAGE 3 - (E+F)
Here we are presented with some of the last coherent memories before confusion fully rolls in and the grey mists form and fade away. Finest moments have been remembered, the musical flow in places is more confused and tangled. As we progress some singular memories become more disturbed, isolated, broken and distant. These are the last embers of awareness before we enter the post awareness stages.

STAGE 4 - (G+H+I+J)
Post-Awareness Stage 4 is where serenity and the ability to recall singular memories gives way to confusions and horror. It's the beginning of an eventual process where all memories begin to become more fluid through entanglements, repetition and rupture.

STAGE 5 - (K+L+M+N)
Post-Awareness Stage 5 confusions and horror.
More extreme entanglements, repetition and rupture can give way to
calmer moments. The unfamiliar may sound and feel familiar.
Time is often spent only in the moment leading to isolation.

STAGE 6 - (O+P+Q+R)
Post-Awareness Stage 6 Is without description.

--

All stages featuring cover art imagined and painted by Ivan Seal.
All stages mastered by Lupo at Calyx in Berlin.
All stages were released on Vinyl and Compact Disc via
'History Always Favours The Winners'.  

 --------------------

First in a series of Six albums by The Caretaker to be released over the next 3 years, slowly cataloguing the stages of early onset dementia. Each album will reveal new points of progression, loss and disintegration, progressively falling further and further towards the abyss of complete memory loss and nothingness...

Embarking on the Caretaker’s final journey with his first release in four years, Everywhere At The End of Time sets off with the familiar vernacular of abraded shellac 78s and their ghostly waltzes to emulate the entropic effect of a mind becoming detached from everyone else’s sense of reality and coming to terms with their own, altered, and ever more elusive sense of ontology. 

The series aims to enlighten our understanding of dementia by breaking it down into a series of stages that provide a haunting guide to its progression, deterioration and disintegration and the way that people experience it according to a range of impending factors. In other words, Everywhere At The End of Time probes some of the most important questions about modern music’s place in a world that’s increasingly haunted or even choked by the tightening noose of feedback loops of influence; perceptibly questioning the value of old memories as opposed to the creation of new ones, and, likewise the fidelity of those musical memories which remain, and whether we can properly recollect them from the mire of our faulty memory banks without the luxury of choice

As the first in the series, and despite its typically frayed loop construction, this volume is the most lucid, as subsequent instalments will continue to move into faded obscurity and material erosion. We’ve only ingested this first volume so far, so we cannot predict whether the ensuing journey and results will be lush, tortuous or, perhaps more likely, an ambiguous weaving and unpicking of the two and all interstices between.

We encourage you to join The Caretaker on this, his final journey thru the endless haunted ballrooms and mazy corridors of his wasting mind...

 

Seth Cooke - (2019) Weigh the Word CS

 

sethcooke.eu ‎– SC001 

 Sounds derived from prophetic ministry cassettes recorded 1996-1999; their inscription onto digital formats; and the transcription of the spoken ministry via IBM Bluemix; with the exception of ‘Substitute’ (P. Townshend).

"Sayings of Jehovah are pure sayings; silver tried in a furnace of earth, refined sevenfold"
Psalm 12:6

"as also in all the epistles, speaking in them concerning these things, among which things are certain hard to be understood, which the untaught and unstable do wrest, as also the other Writings, unto their own destruction"
2 Peter 3:16

"We look… together
Substitute for an other
Me for Him"
'Substitute', P. Townshend

Bible passages from Young’s Literal Translation

Limited edition of 77 c26 cassette tapes

The Nazgûl - (1975) ST CD

 

Psi-Fi ‎– PSCD0005

Shrouded in mystery Kosmische / Kraut / Avant-Garde artefact, produced by Toby Robinson aka The Mad Twiddler circa 1975 for his private Pyramid label.

Tolkien inspired dark ambient soundscapes with spooky / ritualistic atmosphere, treated percussions, gongs & guitars, trippy Hammond & Mini-Moog, tape loops, weird noises, drones…

File under dark ambient, proto-industrial, kraut, experimental...

RIYL: KLUSTER, STOCKHAUSEN, TAJ-MAHAL TRAVELLERS, NURSE WITH WOUND, THROBBING GRISTLE, LUSTMORD, COZMIC CORRIDORS...

“A major work of electronic avant-garde - high quality deep esoterica of the weird and spooky kind.”

Pulse Emitter - (2020) Swirlings

 

Hausu Mountain ‎– HAUSMO92

 ‘Swirlings’ sees one of USA’s most prolific and searching synthesists at full wingspan for Hausu Mountain, taking in cascading cosmic visions, bubbling pastoral simulacra, and icy deep space doom in his devilishly detailed style of composition.

Robedoor - (2020) Drunk On Poison: 2005-2008 4xCD

 

Deathbomb Arc ‎– DBA217 

 The first offerings from void traversing outfit Robedoor were released like a plague upon this Earth. While in the past decade their albums have taken a more methodical pace, it is these debut CDr's and cassettes that remain a testimony to how noise was done at the start of this filthy century. Now Robedoor have scoured their vaults and created a 4 disc compilation of the tracks you must hear. All remastered for perfect sub displeasure.

The Transcendence Orchestra - (2020) Feeling the Spirit CD

 

Editions Mego ‎– EMEGO282

 “Like La Monte Young and The Incredible String Band stuck in an elevator."

In the process of relocating to Den Bosch's Willem Twee Studios, The Transcendence Orchestra let love slip deftly out of its gate and reverberate around the walls of the studio's main hall, a high ceilinged former synagogue in the city's old town. Working intensively to capture its echoes, they coaxed it to appear in pipes and strings, directed it through resonant circuits and shepherded it round the room with beaters, horns and rattles.

Having returned home with the recordings, a purpose began to emerge. Through a process of extensive reconfiguration and testing it became clear that the love contained within could transform perception. Under the right circumstances, and accompanied by appropriate technology, it could serve as a map for navigating beginnings and endings. Like some distant mesmerising chant or a psychedelic folk song, it could connect us and reassure us that we can pass through the boundaries and survive. Perhaps not intact but at least whole.

Here is that map, love soaked diligently into its lines, ready to guide those at a loss or reassure those willing to explore.

Tim Barnes - (2020) De∆d-Loop LP

 

Amish Records ‎– AMI-038 R/W

 Tim Barnes’ latest full-length: DE∆D-LOOP (AMI 038R/W), is his first solo release since 2002’s All Acoustics. DE∆D-LOOP offers another arm in Barnes’ wide-ranging body of music and work, as well as supplying an additional thread connecting the House, pop and sound art conversations the album engages.

In many ways DE∆D-LOOP is House music that takes a sideways approach to the language of dance music. As both a concept and a practice, Barnes aims to turn House on its side, reconsidering its structure and form. The tracks on DE∆D-LOOP reflect Barnes’ status as a renowned percussionist, offering rhythms and textures that both draw the listener in and maintain a spatial and temporal distance/uncertainty. This distance can best be heard on the quiet closing track “NAKU,” but also in the hyperactive and layered percussion of “AEMO” and “GUALA.” This record isn’t all concept, however, as the lead off tracks “HORNA” and “KONQR” sound like something you might hear at rave, albeit standing outside the club in the middle of day after everyone has crashed. The foggy celebration continues on this record, however; listen to “JAPE” and its play with language, cracking words open and hearing what comes out of the space between syllable and sound.

Since 1995, Tim Barnes has been internationally acclaimed as a musician, having played with a range of artists including Tony Conrad, Ikue Mori, Sonic Youth, Glenn Kotche, P.G. Six, Mike Watt, Royal Trux, Stereolab, Jim O’Rourke, Beth Orton, among others. Barnes has most recently become known for his radical site-specific sound art duo with Jeph Jerman (Erstwhile, IDEA Intermedia, Feeding Tube). Working across both genre and instrumentation, Barnes’ singular history as a musician reflects his versatile ear and performance range.

Barnes has also done important research and work as an archivist and engineer, most notably through his Quakebasket-imprint. Quakebasket made available and distributed the work of artists like Henry Flynt, Pandit Pran Nath, Christopher Tree and, most notably, Angus MacLise. In looking forward, Quakebasket released music by Michael J. Schumacher, Tetuzi Akiyama, Sarah Hennies, and Valerio Tricoli, among many others.

DE∆D-LOOP is the latest installment of Amish’s in-house label Required Wreckers, pairing music and sound art with visual artists who share a thematic or process-based methodology. DE∆D LOOP features the work of American-born and French-based artist/filmmaker Erick Baudelaire’s Blind Walls series.

Toshiya Tsunoda - (2019) Extract From Field Recording Archive 5xCD

 

ErstPast ‎– 001-5  Part One / Two

Toshiya Tsunoda is a Japanese sound artist whose quarter century of exploration into field recording has been a huge influence on many other great artists working in similar territory. His archival series of three themed sets of field recording studies, released on three different labels from 1997 to 2001, 'Extract From Field Recording Archive #1-#3”, lay the groundwork for so much of what followed, both from Tsunoda and many others.

All the sounds in the original three releases (#1-#3) were physical vibrations recorded in outdoor and indoor environments from 1993 to 1999, in the port service area in the Miura Peninsula where he was born and grew up, as well as at the neighbor ports.

Also, CD 1-3 are not identical to the originally issued ones. Now all the tracks have exactly the same durations as Tsunoda's original DAT recordings. All the tracks were remastered from these original DAT recordings for this box set. Thus, the duration of each track and each CD are different from the previously released ones. Also, the track lists on Extract #2 (CD 2) and Extract #3 (CD 3) are slightly modified from the original releases, as detailed in the booklet.

In addition to those three, for this reissue box Tsunoda compiled two new albums. CD 4, 'Extract From Field Recording Archive #4', contains his previously unpublished recordings of the Nagaura Port from the same period as #1-#3, and CD 5, 'Reflection-Revisiting', contains more recent recordings from 2007-2018, in which he revisited some of the original port areas, looking for a certain continuity between his ideas in the past and the present, while also discovering the differences between the two periods.

"My purpose for these recordings in the nineties was to observe vibrations, and at the same time to find the observation point for each recording. For some very subtle, inaudible vibrations, a special method of observation such as installing a contact microphone inside a bottle or a particular observation point is required. It can be said that the object of the vibration and the act of observation are inseparable. I think that it is not really 'detection' or 'documenting', but is more likely closer to 'depiction'. The word 'depiction' has a nuance of both watching and portraying an object simultaneously."

"By using small microphones and contact microphones, I tried to detect vibrations that were integrated with the presence of the place, like the vague images existing in the lowest layer of our perception. The space that could be observed in this way was quite different from how we perceive the actual place as a space." (from liner notes by Toshiya Tsunoda)

The extensive liner notes were newly written by Toshiya Tsunoda for this box set. 

Triple Negative + Colour Bük - (2019) Split CS

 

Swallowing Helmets ‎– SH005 

 Madame Tlank & Clinical Wasteman & others. Bayern Tāmaki Makaurau/northsouth London, since 1989/2003/2016.

Vulnerable adults born in the wrong place, put out too tender & possessed by spite. There’s nothing not superficial about it: an animus nursed with bad bad grace. Absentee panelbeating (Tascam stand-ins), raised voices, knock-off Glock & cheap Vamvakaristic Spiel.

---------------

New York junk duo Colour Bük First cassette of the city smell soaked. The collapsed guitar and corruption specific sounds smeared with sewer, vocals were coma or rather sleep talking has singing groan and wobbly. Like the Velvet Underground to come hear from deep in the drainage ditch of the old apartment. Is recommended.

Toshimaru Nakamura - (2010) Egrets CD

 

Samadhisound ‎– sound cd ss017 

 The Samadhisound label, founded and curated by David Sylvian, simultaneously released three impressive titles. Together they present a landmark of the current experimental/electronic/ improv scene.
Be prepared: none of these albums are ‘easy listening’ music – in fact, a lot of this music wouldn’t even be considered ‘ambient’.

Next to David Sylvian, it’s Arve Henriksen linking Toshimaru Nakamura‘s album to that of Jan Bang.
However, Henriksen’s trumpet handling is quite different here: it includes the sound of the instrument itself (like the clicking of the valves), as well as the breathing of the player.
This perfectly fits the music of Toshimaru Nakamura – who is a household name in the Japanese onkyo (noise) and improv scene.

Apart from playing guitar, Nakamura’s main instrument is the ‘No Input Mixing Board’: a mixing board without external input: the output directly connected to the input – the player manipulating the resulting feedback.

Nakamura has released quite an impressive array of albums experimenting with this technique, which explains that that “NIMB”(No Input Mixing Board) tracks are numbered 42 to 45). He is able to control the feedback from the board very subtly.

On ‘Semi’, he improvises to the seemingly generative guitar playing of Tetuzi Akiyama. The tracks with Arve Henriksen sound like a dialogue of two musicians communicatie ‘from the gut of one instrument to the other’.

To me, improv music often feels like ‘musician’s music’ – it does not really seem to include me as a listener.
Not on this album, however: Nakamuru is able to create a musical environment I can connect to and get involved with.
But again: this does not mean this is ‘easy listening’ music….!

bod [包家巷] - (2020) Music for Self Esteem

 

 Year0001 ‎– YR0107 

“PERPETUAL IMPLOSION OF CONCEPT,” Nich Zhu writes in the thesis for the first song on their new album, Music For Self-Esteem. It’s an aptly ambitious sentiment at the beginning of a project that encompasses a 37-track album, four short volumes of chaotic poetry, and a collection of carefully constructed videos. It could also a guiding principle for Zhu’s work under the name bod [包家巷], which has often jolted from tranquil ambience to grinding noise so quickly that the listener is forced to retreat from easy answers. Zhu is trying to communicate something, even if it does keep falling in on itself. In fact, the first song here is called “Please Listen to the Whole Album It'll Be Rewarding I Promise,” and at the end of their note on the song Zhu almost seems to be apologizing as they let go of their thoughts: “I promise not to draw any more lines. The thread is left coiled, the map allowed to fall in place as wind will take it.”

Music For Self-Esteem is still, however loosely, what it announces itself as. The project traces Zhu’s life from college in Portland through a punishing spell in Los Angeles to a more forgiving life in Berlin, where they spoke to me over the phone yesterday. (Full disclosure: Zhu and I attended college together, but neither of us were aware of that until after our interview.) Over the past few years, they have kept returning to the same core concept: “Self-esteem, at least in therapy for me, is the main issue — it was the ground floor of everything.” Whether or not this is music primarily for Zhu’s self-esteem or the listener’s is harder to discern. “That's the point,” they say, before discussing their desire to raze those sorts of boundaries — particularly between life and art — entirely.

However forcefully bod [包家巷] resists easy interpretation, though, Zhu’s music remains deft and affecting. There are crushing stretches here, like the three-minute barrage of “Periodical Acceptance of Chaos” and “LA Was Worth the Struggle but I Had to Leave,” but they always dissolve into some of the most blissful combinations of analog and electronic sound that Zhu has released in their career so far. Classical interludes mingle with dismembered Chinese-language interjections, all intentionally disorienting parts of a project that Zhu sees as a form of "worldbuilding." Listen to Music For Self-Esteem — out today via the Stockholm-based label YEAR0001 — below, and read our conversation after the jump.

Anthony Manning - (1994) Islets In Pink Polypropylene CD

 

Irdial Discs ‎– 54 ird aev 2

Released in 1994 by the unpredictable Irdial Discs imprint (who later became notorious for their collection of Conet Project recordings), visual artist and musical explorer Anthony Manning’s debut album was way ahead of its time. It would be easy to lump Islets in Pink Polypropylene in with other ‘electronica’ records of the day, but Manning’s painstaking experiments were a marked degree of separation from Autechre’s crisp and chirpy Amber or even Aphex Twin’s esoteric Selected Ambient Works Volume II. This unique quality can be attributed to the fact that Manning had a particularly unusual production method, one which 20 years later sounds almost impossible to believe.

In his own words, the process took “many weeks per piece,” and those were weeks of spent doing very little else, including sleeping. The inherent speed bump in his process was that Manning had decided to limit himself to exclusively composing the album on a Roland R8, a cheap drum machine which was elevated (slightly) by its pitch function and fiddly (but serviceable) sequencer.

Being a drum machine, the R8 couldn’t be ‘played’ like a regular synthesizer, but Manning eventually came to the realization that the initially confusing numerical values attached to each sound’s pitch (from -4800 to +4800) could be worked with in multiples of 400 to create a makeshift scale. After tapping out his rhythms in real time using sounds from an R8 ROM card (“mostly the Dance card, number 10”), he used the pitch slider in real time to improvise melodies from each voice and would then edit each note separately, adjusting its numerical value to the nearest multiple of 400.

WHEN THE RECORD WAS FINALLY COMPLETED, MANNING ADMITS THAT HE FINALLY GOT A CHANCE TO SLEEP AGAIN, VOWING TO NEVER, EVER REPEAT THE PROCESS.

Here’s where it’s important to remember that working on a tiny LCD screen using submenus made it almost impossible to get any feel for the composition as a whole (we were a fair few years from today’s DAW systems), so Manning countered this by drawing each track out on graph paper using the Y axis for pitch and the X axis for time. He says that this would make it “easy to see too many notes clustering around too tight a pitch range” or “a single note straying down into the lower register while all the others were in the upper,” but more importantly it allowed him to get a sense of each track’s beginning, middle and end, and work on his compositions far more efficiently.

The fact that Manning managed to even finish Islets in Pink Polypropylene makes it at least worthy of closer investigation, but even now it sounds like little else that’s emerged since (Phoenecia’s Brownout came close, but seven years later). With electronic innovation and nostalgic regression happening at such a rapid pace, it can be hard to weed originality from facsimile, so it’s refreshing to hear an all-electronic album that sounds so organic yet so totally alien.

When the record was finally completed, Manning admits that he finally got a chance to sleep again, vowing to never, ever repeat the process. In a world where it can take less than five minutes to produce tracks that can actually be quite brilliant it’s important to remember that blood, sweat and tears do, every once in a while, result in something truly remarkable.

Anarch Peak - (2019) Vitarium CD

 

Chondritic Sound ‎– CH-334 

 
70 minutes of synth, junk metal and theremin exploration executed by Rodger Stella (Macronympha) and Greh Holger (Hive Mind) in 2009, waiting fatefully for the perfect cover art, ultimately provided by longtime friend and modern design legend Robert Beatty. Two stark tracks focused on the questionable inevitability of death and the sparkling possibility of life in an uncertain future.

9T Antiope & Siavash Amini - (2019) Harmistice LP

 

Hallow Ground ‎– HG1902

9T Antiope have made a name for themselves in the vibrant experimental music scene of Iran over the past years. Now based in Paris, Sara Bigdeli Shamloo and Nima Aghiani are expanding their stylistic scope and team up with long-time friend Siavash Amini for their debut release on Hallow Ground. After 2017’s »TAR« and »FORAS« the year after 2018, »Harmistice« is Amini’s third LP for Hallow Ground and his first in collaboration with other artists. Recorded in Paris and Tehran, the four tracks are the result of »all the long hours of speaking online, being kilometres away, it is a love child of those short times we actually got to be physically in one place.« Vocalist and lyricist Shamloo enters a dialogue with Aghiani and Amini’s sound art, which is from restrained but interlocks voice and noise with striking subtlety. »Harmistice« seamlessly blends the visceral with the sublime, the abstract with the oh-too-real.

From the very first second of »Blue as in Bleeding«, »Harmistice« evokes a sense of suspended terror. Shrill frequencies and aleatoric bursts of feedback give way to a hard-hitting bass drum until Shamloo’s voice arises from the chaos with an uneasy clarity. It’s the perfect opening for a record that is built upon stark contrasts like this one. Amini and Aghiani bring together synthetic sounds with acoustic instruments, creating a tangible tension on which Shamloo’s sometimes sensitive, sometimes emotionally detached delivery thrives. »It’s all based on a dream, a nightmare about war,« she says in regards to her lyrics that move between poetic abstraction and first person prose, blurring the lines between lived experience and sinister premonition. »Harmistice« takes inventory after the oneiric damagehas been dealt in real life.

As a whole, »Harmistice« is thus as ambiguous as its title suggests. As an all-too-lucid dream about unspeakable things that are being lent a voice it overwhelms the senses with an unheard-of volume. Drawn from the depths of the subconscious, »Harmistice« may just be the most challenging album in either 9T Antiope or Amini’s discography. 

Sangam - (2019) The Night After CS


Doom Trip Records ‎– DTR30 

 Doom Trip is pleased to present a surprise drop by the prolific underground artist known as Sangam. In the works for nearly a year, this is the artist's 5th Doom Trip appearance, but his first solo Doom Trip album.

Dreamy as ever, The Night After acts as the summation of Sangam's sound. Synths float and dip with a graceful precision that is both calming and invigorating. Weather events and the sounds of city streets become the listener's environment, only to be pulled away when least expected. The experience is ultimately peaceful, but not without a sense of dread.

Sangam has put out nearly 100 releases since 2012, on nearly forty different record labels. His previous Doom Trip appearances include 2017's Diamondstein split "Lullabies for Broken Spirits", "Doom Mix Vol. II," "The Ocean Between Us" collab with Diamondstein, and "Doom Mix Vol. III".

Shots - (2019) Private Hate LP

 

Careful Catalog ‎– CARE04 

The music of Shots—though, true, “music” doesn’t always seem to be an entirely accurate descriptor—takes the form of an unapologetic statement, an unanswerable question, an irreconcilable truth. Dan Gilmore puts it perfectly when he places the material on Private Hate in context with the album cover of Can We Win: “that thing was clearly embedded in broad daylight, defiantly real and on display as if to antagonize whoever saw it into coming up with an explanation.” Like that pink-clad, unsettling, uncanny valley-residing thing, Shots’ creations are modest yet unyielding in their impenetrability. As with past releases, the stabbing injections of erratically struck percussion and other trivial objects melds with whatever environment surrounds them, but on Private Hate the sense of place is more important than ever—in that the increased presence of location somehow makes the recordings even more difficult to define. We hear the distant hum of traffic and honking horns, rushing air currents that may be from concentrated wind or manmade vents, but there’s absolutely no sensory physicality to any of it, and we’re left floundering as we try to steady ourselves in a room with no floor. The conclusion of “PH1” is filled with empty space, but the abrasive squeaking and clangs of metal make that irrelevant as the listener is encased in a concentrated claustrophobia; it’s even more disorienting in “K&K,” where a distinctly human setting is challenged by concentrated contact mic scrabbling, any comfort that familiarity might provide vacuumed out by this spacial distortion. As always, the sound itself is truly and purely sublime, but it’s not an easy beauty, and with Private Hate more than ever Shots prove their mettle in an area of abstraction that no one else seems to occupy.

Kayo Dot - (2010) Stained Glass

 

Hydra Head Records ‎– HH666-213 

This is a 20-minute synthaesthetic exploration of actual stained glass.

Kayo Dot's Stained Glass. 20 minutes of beautiful, synth heavy avant experimentalism.

Scenes of rapture, agony, and consecration are arrayed as windows in this latest EP by the avant-rock maestros. With a large ensemble of glimmering malleted percussion, shrieking distorted organs, crystalline guitars, and sighing horns, violins, and vocals, Stained Glass' translucent passages of unearthly beauty set a new standard in soothing terror. Stained Glass features the return of original Kayo Dot lyricist Jason Byron, as well as a guest appearance by electric guitar genius Trey Spruance (Secret Chiefs 3, Mr. Bungle).

Crazy Doberman - (2017) Free LSD LP

 

Radical Documents ‎– RDLP03

 Hailing from LaFayette Indiana, this amorphous psycho jazz unit drops a heavy slab of tunes that sounds like “the Glenn Miller orchestra recorded a tape for Industrial Records and microwaved the masters”. Hard to pin down and forever tripping with new players/ live sessions all over the US. This LP features: Drew Davis, Tim Gick, John Olson ( Wolf Eyes ), Jessica Billey, Jason Filer, Aaron Zernack, Paul Baldwin, and Zeno Ben-Amotz.

Animal Hospital - (2009) Memory CD

 

 Barge Recordings ‎– BRG007

"The people behind Brooklyn's Barge imprint have clearly spent the last six months trying to work out how to follow up last year's jaw-dropping "Baby, It's Cold Inside" album from the oddly monikered 'The Fun Years', one of the most satisfying and immersive releases of the year. Their response? Why they've only gone and produced this astonishing, multi-layered epic from Kevin Micka, aka Animal Hospital. "Memory" is a record that engages with familiar techniques and proceeds to completely f*ck with the programme. The album starts with a shimmering duet for music box and guitar, laying the foundations for what's to follow. Except things don't quite develop in the manner you might expect if you're into this sort of delicate, engrossing home listening, "His Belly Burst" is up next and slowly evolves from the sound of a mournful, solitary Cello (beautifully played by Jonah Sacks), to a rumbling, droney, sometimes distorted mass of sound that brings to mind the post-post-rock of, say, the Constellation label, or Mogwai's quiet/loud blueprints but with a completely unfamiliar backbone shaped by electronic, experimental and classical traditions. By the time "2nd Anniversary" sweeps in it becomes hard to really identify what sort of album you're listening to, finding yourself in the presence of distilled, affected guitar noises that lie somewhere between late, treated John Fahey and Neil Young's amazing soundtrack for the film "Dead Man" - the dissonance at once jarring and deeply moving. In turn, "A Safe Place" sounds like a cross between Oval, Tortoise, Mika Vainio and Radiohead, rearranging and rewiring human sounds inside reverberating bass and malfunctioning electronics before Micka's voice resonates through the sparse elements to ground the music in a deep, mournful clearing. Fuelled by coffee and heartache and recorded in an old bank, an antiquated movie theater lobby, and various apartments around Virginia and Cape Cod, It's left to the 17 minute title track to close the album with perhaps its most astonishing and heart-wrenching segement. The opening once again seems indebted to Tortoise, but the unusual, wordless vocal layering introduces entirely different dimensions. 8 minutes in and things become quietly colossal, merging sweeping strings, twangy, edgy drops with extraordinary arrangements that keep you at once transfixed and disturbed. And that's the thing about this amazing album - it has all these different, wildly incompatible ideas that somehow come together and merge into eachother, making use of electronic devices, shelves of effects, delay units, as well as shiny guitar tones, vocal washes, and dramatic build-ups that create a unique sound you're unlikely to come across again despite all the familiar elements squeezed in. It's the realisation of one man's messed up vision, held together by things that shouldnt work but somehow really do. Just awesome."

Gaël Segalen - (2019) Sofia Says LP

 

  Coherent States ‎– CS-31

Three years after the danceable field recordings of her "L'Ange Le Sage" debut LP, the Parisian sound artist, activist and musician Gaël Segalen delivers her third album, "Sofia Says", picking up where her "Memoir of My Manor" cassette stopped. Gaël adopts a persona, Sofia, and through a third person dissociation she presents a dynamic sample of her compositional psyche, creating a compelling mixture of abstract noise experimentations, field recordings and ecstatic electronic manipulation.

This ensemble of sonifications, made of augmented/edited improvisations, oscillates between the individual and the myriad, between chaos and wisdom. It first depicts collective organization, with a mass of creatures coexisting and populating spaces voluntarily, through a will of celebration, as in "Like Warehouse" where sounds resonate, or like the tribute referred to in "Cortege". Natural sounds surface through synthetic and rhythmic sonic masses, the essential presence of the living. There are voices emerging from this album, signals that are suddenly raised - invitation, alert, incantation, exhortation. Like traces and awakening marks, that of birds, taking back the abandoned hangar in the morning after a warehouse party, that of watchwomen and men who call for vigilance during gatherings in need of remaining close together. That of whistles, voice call outs, chants, multiple bells, train rail hammering, wheels that come and go, appear and disappear.

Shifting from collective vision to that of personal determination, polylistening allows for the desire of detachement, elevation, seeing the light as well as multiplicity and singular choices on coexisting and dialogue.

"Mountain" - both east and west slopes - offers a different view. From a height, we hear incantations about the observation of the masses and displacements and the harmony that can derive from them. Large, flying, isolated creatures or clouds move in timelapse, progressing together or moving apart in accelerations, time jumps, multiple gaits.
There's often a lull at the end of the pieces. "I see you" marks the epic told by Sofia, the oracle, the priestess. In a final whirlwind, in a lament, this is a hymn to love, passion and noise and to the mechanics and cadences of life itself, born from chaos which, before leading to "Horizon (Harp pt.2)", the bonus track, dissipates into the ether and open questions.

Gaël Segalen has been a genuine explorer of sound for more than 20 years. Besides her record label accreditations and her diploma in electroacoustic composition in the lineage of the GRM (Groupe de Recherches Musicales), she has worked for Radio France Internationale, as a sound mixer for film, before jumping onto many sound art psychogeographical projects under the name of IhearU and multimedia collaborations such as with artists Constanze Ruhm, Marlies PöschI, Shu Lea Cheang, also participating in various compilations, audiowalks, radio productions, online platforms, installations, while travelling the world to collect voices and inspiration for her musical compositions, and giving classes on sound to explore it's therapeutic dimension, using it as a social tool to interact with diverse audiences. She has played and engaged sonic conversations among others with, Joachim Montessuis, Jean-Marc Foussat, Best available Technology, Aki Onda, Brandon LaBelle, duenn, while she maintains the experimental electronic project Les Graciés with Eric Douglas Porter (Afrikan Sciences). She is also co-founder of Polyphones, a Parisian network dedicated to women in musical experimentation, and OWO, the electronic Open Women Orchestra.